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Saturday, January 07, 2006

HEAT, bushfires. Just another Australian summer, some hotter, some wetter, some cooler, some drier. As per usual, the northern hemisphere freezes and the blame game is in overdrive. At the 2005 UN Climate Change Conference in Montreal, Greenpeace's Steven Guilbeault stated: "Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter, that's what we're dealing with."

It is that simple! If it's hot, it's global warming; if it's cold, it's global warming. Demonstrators in frigid temperatures in Montreal chanted: "It's hot in here! There's too much carbon in the atmosphere!" The same apocalyptic Guilbeault says: "Time is running out to deal with climate change. Ten years ago, we thought we had a lot of time, five years ago we thought we had a lot of time, but now science is telling us that we don't have a lot of time." Really.

In 1992, Greenpeace's Henry Kendall gave us the Chicken Little quote, "Time is running out"; in 1994, The Irish Times tried to frighten the leprechauns with "Time running out for action on global warming, Greenpeace claims"; and in 1997 Chris Rose of Greenpeace maintained the religious mantra with "Time is running out for the climate". We've heard such failed catastrophist predictions before. The Club of Rome on resources, Paul Erlich on population, Y2K, and now Greenpeace on global warming.

During the past 30 years, the US economy grew by 50 per cent, car numbers grew by 143 per cent, energy consumption grew by 45 per cent and air pollutants declined by 29 per cent, toxic emissions by 48.5 per cent, sulphur dioxide levels by 65.3 per cent and airborne lead by 97.3 per cent. Most European signatories to the Kyoto Protocol had greenhouse gas emissions increase since 2001, whereas in the US emissions fell by nearly 1per cent. Furthermore, carbon credits rewarded Russia, (east) Germany and Britain, which had technically and economically backward energy production in 1990.

By the end of this century, the demographically doomed French, Italians and Spaniards may have too few environmentalists to fund Greenpeace's business. So what really does Greenpeace want? A habitable environment with no humans left to inhabit it? Destruction of the major economies for .07C change?

Does it matter if sea level rises a few metres or global temperatures rise a few degrees? No. Sea level changes by up to 400m, atmospheric temperatures by about 20C, carbon dioxide can vary from 20 per cent to 0.03 per cent, and our dynamic planet just keeps evolving. Greenpeace, contrary to scientific data, implies a static planet. Even if the sea level rises by metres, it is probably cheaper to address this change than reconstruct the world's economies.

For about 80 per cent of the time since its formation, Earth has been a warm, wet, greenhouse planet with no icecaps. When Earth had icecaps, the climate was far more variable, disease depopulated human settlements and extinction rates of other complex organisms were higher. Thriving of life and economic strength occurs during warm times. Could Greenpeace please explain why there was a pre-Industrial Revolution global warming from AD900 to 1300? Why was the sea level higher 6000 years ago than it is at present? Which part of the 120m sea-level rise over the past 15,000 years is human-induced? To attribute a multicomponent, variable natural process such as climate change to human-induced carbon emissions is pseudo-science.

There is no debate about climate change, only dogma and misinformation. For example, is there a link between hurricanes Katrina and Rita and global warming? Two hurricanes hit the US Gulf Coast six weeks apart in 1915, mimicking Katrina and Rita. If global warming caused recent storms, there should have been more hurricanes in the Pacific and Indian oceans since 1995. Instead, there has been a slight decrease at a time when China and India have increased greenhouse gas emissions. The impact of hurricanes might seem more severe because of the blanket instantaneous news coverage and because more people now live in hurricane-prone areas, hence there is more property damage and loss of life.

Only a strong economy can produce the well fed who have the luxury of espousing with religious fervour their uncosted, impractical, impoverishing policies. By such policies, Greenpeace continues to exacerbate grinding poverty in the Third World. The planet's best friend is human resourcefulness with a supportive, strong economy and reduced release of toxins. The greenhouse gases - nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and methane - have been recycled for billions of years without the intervention of human politics.

Ian Plimer is a professor of geology at the University of Adelaide and former head of the school of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne.

The time has come for me to comment on the Turkoman’s Wooden Nickel award for the meanest Calvinist of 2005.

You may be wondering why it took me so long. This is old news. He passed out his awards on Tuesday, and here it’s already Saturday.

Well, truth is, this is the first time since that ill-fated day that I’ve been able to drag myself out of bed. I’ve been on Prozac all week. Up until that ill-fated day, I used to think I had the hide of an African Honey Badger. But his award drove me into a deep blue funk.

It’s not just that I didn’t win first place. I mean, Dr. White is a worthy contender. I could settle for second place.

No, it’s worse than that—much worse. I was not even a nominee! How could things have gone so wrong? Have I lost my killer instinct?

Sometimes innuendo is more hurtful that outright slander. The fact that I wasn’t even in the running for the meanest Calvinist award borders on defamation of character.

The unspoken, but unmistakable, wink-wink insinuation is that if I’m not mean, then I must be almost…nice! How could the Turkoman stab me in the back like that? I guess it bears out the old Italian proverb: “Save me from my friends, and I’ll take care of my enemies.”

That was my first reaction. But, after popping a few Prozac and washing them down with a fifth of Jack Daniels, it occurred to me that the process was really outside of his control. He wasn’t responsible for the nominations. All he did was to tabulate the votes.

Clearly, then, there was an orchestrated campaign to besmirch my hard-earned reputation by unfounded rumors that, appearances notwithstanding, I was really a nice guy after all.

I can see it now. One or more of my enemies hired a private detective, who dropped off compromising photos in an unmarked Manila envelopment.

After sending his young children out of the store, the Turkoman thumbed through incriminating pictures of a cheesy look-alike caught flagrante delicto in random acts of kindness—buying Girl Scout cookies, patting dogs on the head, and driving the speed limit in the school zone. I had been framed!

I should have seen it coming all along. We’ve all heard lurid stories about the politics of personal destruction. About soccer moms who hire a hit man to create a vacancy on the team so that her daughter can be a cheerleader. But you know how goes: you never think it’ll happen to you. It’s always the next guy.But I hadn’t hit bottom. My dark night of the soul came when the thought crossed my mind that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t a put-up job after all. What if I really had lost touch with my inner warrior?

That triggered an identity crisis the likes of which I haven’t had since my midlife crisis, when I maxed out my Visa card on trips to Vegas. (The iMonk and I used to share a hotel room to save money.)

After popping a few more Prozac and washing them down with another fifth of Jack Daniels, I dialed the psychic hotline to have a conference call with Urban II, John Knox, and J. Gresham Machen. Das Machen was even considerate enough to give me his cell phone number so that I could call him anytime, day or night.

They counseled me to undergo a rigorous regime in order to recover my fighting trim. I was to take a Berlitz course in conversational Klingon, followed by immersion therapy by watching Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, and Clint Eastwood flicks. Oh, and I should also buy tickets to UFC Unleashed.

After that I ought to head to the hill country and hunt me some wild boar. I’ll hire Fide-O to be my trackers.

Finally, I was instructed to have the "horrible decree" tatooed on both arms.

Although they often cooperate with various churches, they are self-governing. This autonomy has made them controversial in some Evangelical circles where they are viewed as encroaching upon or usurping the Scriptural prerogatives of the church. They drain away resources. They’re rogue elephants. They dilute doctrinal purity.

These allegations raise a number of questions for which there is no uniform answer.

1.How do we define a church? One traditional way is to isolate and identify the “marks” of the church. In Reformed circles, the marks of the church are word, sacrament, and discipline.

But it isn’t clear how this would transgress on the jurisdiction of the church. If, on the one hand, a parachurch ministry doesn’t duplicate these activities, then it isn’t taking over the functions of the church; if, on the other hand, a parachurch ministry does duplicate these activities, then what distinguishes it from a church? If a church is what it does, and a parachurch ministry does the work of the church, then a parachurch ministry is a church. At that point they coincide.

2.The definition can, however, be amended. Not just anyone is authorized to preach or administer the sacraments. That is reserved for an ordained minister. Seminary professors are often ordained ministers.

But there are problems with this redefinition:

i) Some church polities are more formal than others. So it becomes a difference of degree. Depending on your theory of church government, there is no principled distinction.

ii) Apropos (i), the NT doesn’t assign the administration of the sacraments to the pastor. And ordination, in the modern sense, is not a NT qualification for teaching and preaching.

This is not necessarily to object to these extra-Scriptural developments, but if the accusation is that parachurch ministry is unscriptural, then the charge cannot be sustained.

3.Indeed, the rise of parachurch ministries is a logical outgrowth of the Protestant Reformation. In Catholicism, there is a principled distinction between the laity and the clergy. Valid communion presupposes valid holy orders. Valid holy orders presuppose apostolic succession. But you don’t have this is Evangelical theology.

4.What is more, the Protestant Reformation regarded the lay state as no less of a divine calling than the pastoral vocation. And many parachurch ministries draw upon the expertise of the laity.

5.Another way of amending the definition is to distinguish between independent organizations and organizations formally affiliated with a particular denomination. As such, they are under the supervision and control of the sponsoring denomination.

But there are problems with this redefinition as well:

i) Now we are redefining the church. A denomination is not a church. A denomination is a set of local churches. Indeed, as John Frame has said, "denominations themselves are parachurch organizations."

ii) In addition, differences in polity reassert themselves at the denominational level. If your theory of local church government is more hierarchical, then that will carry over to your denominational structure. But if your theory of local church government is more informal, then that, too, will carry over to your denominational structure.

So it’s hard to find any principled objections to parachurch ministry. If so, then this leaves us with the pragmatic objections:

6. They drain away resources.

That’s possible. However, parachurch ministries arise to fill a vacuum. If the church were already assuming these responsibilities, then there’d be no need for parachurch ministry.

7.They are rogue elephants.

That, too, is possible. Of course, churches and denominations can also revert to the wild. We’ve all seen liberal prelates who hijack a denomination over the protest of the faithful

8.They dilute doctrinal purity.

It’s true that some parachurch organizations evince a considerable degree of doctrinal indifference.

i) But is this a cause or a consequence of doctrinal indifference? As free associations, parachurch organizations attract like-minded volunteers. If you’re a Calvinist, you’ll gravitate to a Reformed organization. If you’re an ecumenist, you’ll gravitate to an interfaith organization.

ii) In addition, not all parachurch organizations are into indoctrination, per se. For example, a Christian legal aid society may be staffed by lawyers of various persuasions who are generally concerned with the civil rights of Christians.

iii) It is also possible to overemphasize the difference between Christians at the expense of their spiritual unity in Christ. We can so accentuate the doctrine of the local church that we lose the doctrine of the universal church.

All said, I don’t see parachurch ministry in competition with the church. And even where it is, a little competition can be a good thing.

It’s easy to take the present for granted. Since we live in the present, the present carries an air of inevitability. After all, we’re here, aren’t we? So it was bound to turn out this way, right?

This can numb us to the full force of Bible prophecy. We need to make an effort to assume the historical horizon of the prophet and his original audience.

Take Isa 19:16-25, in which Isaiah, back in the 8C BC, foresaw the conversion of Egypt and Assyria to the truth faith.

From the standpoint of an 8C observer, this prediction is perfectly absurd. Both Egypt and Assyria were paradigms of pagan idolatry. They were implacable enemies of each other, as well as perennial foes of Israel. They were the superpowers of their day. When one was up, the other was down, but the balance of power always tipped in one direction or the other, with Egypt on one side of the scale as Assyria or Babylon on the other.

Between them, the kingdoms of Egypt and Mesopotamia represented the utter antithesis of the true faith. And the idea of their subordination to the faith of Israel was pretty preposterous.

It’s as if Isaiah went out of his way to choose the most unlikely and intractable examples to illustrate the overruling purpose and power of God. Nothing could be more counterintuitive. No outcome could be farther removed from any sense of inevitability, probability, or plausibility.

And yet, in the early centuries of the church, the Middle East and the Levant did, indeed, embrace the faith of OT Israel and its Jewish counterpart in the NT.

From the vantage-point of a fifth-generation Christian living in Alexandria or Baghdad or North Africa, Isaiah’s ancient oracle might well have held an air of inevitability.

It is also a mistake to assume that all prophecies are punctiliar. Certain prophecies can be fulfilled over time, rather than at one time only. The last chapter of history has yet to be written—except in the mind of the Lord.

Until the ink is dry, we watch and wait. You know it when you see it—and not before. You know it when it happens. For prophecy is prospective, but its recognition is retrospective.

Pat Robertson’s recent statement that Ariel Sharon’s stroke reflects the judgment of God for Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza has supplied yet more fodder for the enemies of the faith to mock the gospel.

This is a pity. Robertson has done a lot of good in the course of his career. He’s a man of great entrepreneurial and administrative abilities, having founded such diverse and useful organizations as the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), the Christian Coalition, the Flying Hospital, International Family Entertainment, Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation, and Regent University.

He is a Marine with a Yale law degree and an MDiv. Clearly a man of considerable talent and accomplishment.

Unfortunately he has a habit of putting a match to his own achievements by his incendiary rhetoric.

There are several underlying causes of this condition. To begin with, Robertson has never been able to make up his mind what he wants to be.

For example, if you want to be a political power-broker, then you have to avoid impolitic statements. You can’t afford to say everything that comes to mind. Even if what you say is true, it may be divisive, and if your objective is to forge a political alliance, you can’t get away with say everything you think. You can be a pundit, or you can be player, but you can’t be both.

Second, as an independently wealthy business mogul with his own news network, Robertson is answerable to no one—and it shows.

Third, his lack of accountability is reinforced by his charismatic theology, which leads his to assume an oracular tone when making his public pronouncements. He doesn’t merely speak for himself; no, he speaks for God: God is whispering in his ear.

Fourth, he has, from what I can tell, a pretty eclectic belief-system, consisting in snips and snails and puppy dog tails stitched together from Pentecostalism, dispensationalism, and dominion theology.

His most recent statement reflects the dispensational side of his theology. And in this respect it’s no different than the outlook of the Left Behind series. As such, it can’t be dismissed as a mere idiosyncrasy.

The presupposition of Robertson’s remarks is that the modern state of Israel represents the fulfillment of the prophetic land-promises. Hence, Sharon is guilty of flouting God’s law by returning Gaza to the Arabs.

BTW, there’s no such thing as a “Palestinian.” We’re talking about garden-variety Arabs.

For the record, I’m a default amil with a soft spot for postmillennialism.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s stipulate to Robertson’s eschatology. Even so, one of the problems with Robertson’s statement is that if fails to distinguish between principle and process.

To my knowledge, Sharon is not trying to give land away in order to appease the Arabs. He is not doing this as a good-faith gesture to jump-start the “roadmap to peace” (is this a euphemism or an oxymoron?).

Rather, he doesn’t think that it’s possible, at this point, to make peace with the Arabs, and so he is unilaterally drawing the borders of Israel in a way favorable to Israel. Gen. Sharon is attempting to draw defensible borders.

This is not a concession to the enemy, but a purely pragmatic and hardnosed policy driven by Israel’s national security interests.

So this is not a point of principle. He is not guilty of a moral compromise. Rather, this is a prudential question. What is the most effective way to secure the survival of Israel?

In addition, there’s the demographic time bomb shaping the policy. To the extent that Israel clings to largely Arab occupied territory, she dilutes her Jewish identity and autonomy.

I would add, to greatly oversimplify, that the political landscape of Israel is riven between two opposing ideologies: Marxism and Zionism. Marxism is a Jewish ideology, and it retains a magnetic attraction to many of the Jewish intelligentsia.

Marxism has a utopian view of human nature. It believes that it’s possible to talk through our problems. Befriend our enemies. The Arabs are warlike because they are poor and disenfranchised.

At the other end of the spectrum is Zionism, represented by the Ultra-orthodox. In a sense, they are utopian too. But they see things in religious terms and dualistic terms.

In between you have a spectrum of opportunistic hawks and doves. That, combined with a parliamentary system of gov’t, makes it very difficult for Israel to take decisive action.

A further complication is that Israel is not economically self-sufficient. She has limited natural resources. Hence, the state of Israel is dependent on international trade and commerce. Yet most of the world is hostile to Israel.

So that, again, acts as a restraint on what Israel can do for fear of economic sanctions. As such, Israel must often resort to half-measures when dealing with her Arab (and Iranian) neighbors and enemies.

We need to make allowance for these prudential and practical exigencies when we comment on Israel’s foreign policy.

On a final note: there are several astute fundamentalists who frequent Triablogue. I would like to hear from them on these issues. Some of them know more about Israeli politics than do I. They also know more about the current state of dispensationalism than do I.

Do they agree with Robertson? If so, why? If not, why? Send me your comments. Or comment on your own blog and leave a hyperlink at mine.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Steve and Gene have responded well to this latest post from Dave, and I won't be addressing some of the subjects they've already covered. See http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/01/confutation-of-atheism-11.html and http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/01/confutation-of-atheism-12.html.

Dave writes:

"Justin also grounds the parallels in the pre-Jesus activity of demons, whocreated the parallels retroactively through pagan poets, so when Jesus camealong, he'd look no more special than any other god man."

Justin repeatedly comments that Jesus is "more special", and he explains that Christians have evidence for their claims about Jesus, whereas pagans don't have evidence for their mythology. Justin mentions some vague parallels, mentions some differences, and distinguishes between Christian evidence and an absence of evidence for pagan mythology. See my documentation at http://ntrminblog.blogspot.com/2006/01/pagan-parallels-and-church-fathers.html.

Dave goes on:

"Sure, and I never said Jesus was a perfect mirror image of the pagans, either."

It's not just that Jesus isn't "a perfect mirror image". It's that there are many differences along with some vague parallels, and those parallels don't compel us to the conclusion that Christianity was derived from paganism. The New Testament is highly Jewish and highly anti-paganism. The earliest church fathers aren't as Jewish, but are highly anti-paganism. These background characteristics of early Christianity make Dave's theory initially unlikely. Again, see the documentation in my blog article linked above.

Dave writes:

"Common ground that includes specific parallels such as sons of gods being bornin unique fashion, virgin births, resurrections and ascensions."

You're being too vague. Birth is a significant event for all humans. The fact that religious figures would commonly be referred to as having a birth in some sort of "unique fashion" isn't specific enough to warrant the conclusion that one religion was derived from another. As I, Steve, and Gene have explained to you repeatedly, you have yet to document a pagan virgin birth account predating Christianity. The pattern we see in pagan mythology is birth by means of sex, which is the opposite of the Christian account. Opposites are not parallels. And what "resurrections" do you have in mind? Pagans not only didn't believe in the Jewish concept of resurrection, but even were repulsed by it and criticized it (Acts 17:32). The Christian message was "to Gentiles foolishness" (1 Corinthians 1:23). N.T. Wright comments:

"Christianity was born into a world where its central claim was known to befalse. Many believed that the dead were non-existent; outside Judaism, nobodybelieved in resurrection....Lots of things could happen to the dead in thebeliefs of pagan antiquity, but resurrection was not among the availableoptions." (The Resurrection of the Son of God [Minneapolis, Minnesota: FortressPress, 2003], pp. 35, 38)

As far as "ascensions" are concerned, you're again being too vague. The concept of a figure departing from the earth is common and vague. The departure has to occur by means of the figure moving in some manner from one location to another. Nobody would need to get such a vague concept from another belief system. It's not specific enough to warrant an assumption of borrowing.

Dave continues:

"You can't just say it's mere coincidence that pre-Christian Greeks thoughtPerseus was born of a virgin. Do you agree that virgin-birth was nothing uniqueto Christianity, yes or no?"

Steve and Gene have already explained that you're wrong to claim that Perseus was born of a virgin. But even if you had been right, why would the existence of a prior virgin birth account prove borrowing? It wouldn't. A birth occurs either through sex or without it. If one group claims a virgin birth, then another group claims one, the second claim could be derived from the first, but not necessarily. And, as Steve explained, even if we were to assume that the New Testament account was influenced by a pre-Christian source, how do you know that the source was a pagan myth rather than the Septuagint rendering of Isaiah 7, for example? You're claiming to know things you can't possibly know. Where your theory lacks evidence, you substitute assertions.

Dave continues:

"The fact that Justin admits that there is no virgin-birth known in the raceof Abraham is irrelevant to the cites of virgin-births coming from the race ofthe Greeks."

You haven't documented a single case, yet you're using the plural.

Dave writes:

"Irrelevant, the chances of two different savior gods being said to be born ofvirgins, by sheer chance and without any borrowing from one to the other, givenChristianity's existence in the middle of such paganism, are almost zero."

You haven't documented any pagan virgin birth accounts. But even if you had documented one, why should we think that it would prove borrowing? You do realize that virginity is a common theme that wouldn't require borrowing from one source to another, don't you? You do realize that myth accounts often changed over time, don't you? Where's your documentation of a pagan account involving a virgin birth, your documentation that the account contained the virgin birth before New Testament times, and your documentation that the New Testament authors had to have borrowed from this pagan source? Why should we think that any borrowing would be necessary? And if it was necessary, why not consider the Septuagint version of Isaiah 7 a more likely source?

Dave goes on:

"Second, the whole idea of gods impregnating woman was known beforeChristianity, and therefore, whether God the Father became flesh and took awayMary's virginity so as to concieve Jesus, or some other way which left herviginity intact, god's impregnating woman were a common motif."

A "common motif" doesn't require borrowing. People are born either naturally or supernaturally. The fact that both pagan mythology and the New Testament are in that second category doesn't prove that the New Testament accounts were derived from pagan mythology.

Dave continues:

"No coincidence...the gospel authors were making use of a commonly acceptedexpectation of what a god-man would do, to make Jesus more palatable totheir first-century pagan audiences, born out absolutely perfectly by JustinMartyr doing exactly that."

You haven't shown any pre-Christian pagan examples of virgin birth, nor have you given us any reason to think that paganism would have more of an influence on a Jewish religion than Jewish thought would.

Dave writes:

"again, it's either geneaological, or, sheer chance, that the Christianspropound a virgin born god-man in the middle of a historical context full ofvirgin-born god men."

You're telling us that there was "a historical context full of virgin-born god men". Yet, as Richard Swinburne said in my earlier citation of him, pagans didn't believe in an incarnation of God, and you haven't given us even one example of a pagan virgin birth account. What we do see often is a being less powerful than God being born by means of sex. But since concepts such as birth and virginity are common to all humans, how could you assume borrowing from one religion to another even if the pagan accounts involved the virgin birth of God? You'd still have to examine the historical evidence surrounding the Christian claim.

Dave writes:

"Jews wouldn't, Greeks would"

And the earliest Christians were Jews living in Israel. Matthew's gospel, which reports the virgin birth, is written by a Jew and is highly Jewish in its content. Regarding Luke, Ben Witherington writes:

On issues of naturalism and historical evidence, Dave has again been incoherent and inconsistent. What he says in one post isn't consistent with what he's said elsewhere, and he sometimes argues for multiple views within a single post. You get the impression that he's trying to maintain the appearance of having a case without having one.

Thirty-four-year-old Mark Hulett of Williston, Vt., has been convicted on charges that he "raped a little girl many, many times over a four-year span starting when she was seven," reports Burlington's WCAX-TV. Prosecutors asked for a sentence of eight to 20 years, but the judge gave him . . . 60 days:

Judge Edward Cashman disagreed explaining that he no longer believes that punishment works.

"The one message I want to get through is that anger doesn't solve anything. It just corrodes your soul," said Judge Edward Cashman speaking to a packed Burlington courtroom. Most of the on-lookers were related to a young girl who was repeatedly raped by Mark Hulett who was in court to be sentenced. . . .

"I discovered it accomplishes nothing of value; it doesn't make anything better; it costs us a lot of money; we create a lot of expectation, and we feed on anger,"Cashman explained to the people in the court.

Nothing of value? Locking Hulett up for 20 years would keep him out of circulation, unable to rape more little girls, until 2026, when he would be 54 years old. That in itself seems sufficient reason to do so.

"Cashman explained that he is more concerned that Hulett receive sex offender treatment"--whatever that is--"as rehabilitation," according to the report. Bizarrely, "under Department of Corrections classification, Hulett is considered a low-risk for re-offense so he does not qualify for in-prison treatment." You almost have to wonder if the people who run Vermont are insane.

How utterly senseless it would be toward his own evangelization purposes, IF he indeed stretched the truth to create more parallelsim than actually existed. I don't think Justin would be that stupid to step on his own toes.

Justin also grounds the parallels in the pre-Jesus activity of demons, who created the parallels retroactively through pagan poets, so when Jesus came along, he'd look no more special than any other god man. Such desperate excuse is quite appropriate for an apologist who cannot deny the parallels and must come up with some reason for why they exist.

In other words, you have no evidence of a supporting argument from Justin himself, so you invented it for him. You were asked to produce a supporting argument from Justin actually showing that the Christians borrowed their stories from those myths. All Justin offers is a theory of the origins of the Greek myths, but he also tells us exactly where the source of the Christian stories lays. You must set what Justin says in one place against what he says in another in order to assert your theory.

Common ground that includes specific parallels such as sons of gods being born in unique fashion, virgin births, resurrections and ascensions. Justin just isn't sufficiently stupid to create parallels where his Greek audience would know none exist. THIS is why you have to deal with the parallels he cites seriously, instead of just waving them off never thinking about how ridiculous Justin and his audience would be if in fact the parallels weren't as close as the ones he cited.

a. Justin states he is making them because Christians are being charged with atheism. Why would Justin cite these parallels as a defense against atheism if his audience had considered these parallels already and believed they were valid? Why would Justin have pointed out the parallels if he knew his audience was already making the connections? How does that make sense as an argument that Christians are not atheists?

b. Since Steve, Jason, and I, along with Metzger and Yamauchi are interacting with the content of those parallels and you have avoided doing so except to keep repeating Justin's statement, it is not we who have failed to take them seriously.

Also First, what do you mean by asking me whether I can find a statement of genealogical parallel between Jupiter and Christ in the New Testament? Did I ever say or imply that such COULD be found there? Did I not cite Justin as my sole source for these parallels so far?

What is the source of Justin's belief in the virgin birth? The New Testament and the Old Testament. His apology tells us this in detail. Thus you need to to find the genealogical parallel that Justin is supposedly alleging if you are going to allege a copycat theory which you claimed, adamantly, stands.

the similarlity requires some sort of genealogy (who borrowed from who), andmy proof that the Christians borrowed from the pagans is Justin's desperateresort to retro-active demon activity to prime the world with tales of god menlike Jesus, before Jesus was born, the best example of which is (snip).

a. Justin is not arguing that Christians borrowed from these tales. That is an argument you are supplying for him. A statement that analogous parallels exist does not then translate into Christians borrowing from them.

b. The portion of the FA you cited goes on to say that those demons influenced those poets through their contact with Moses and the Old Testament. The theory being advanced, if we assume your naturalistic supposition and remove the references to demons, is that the common source for the pagan myths is the prophetic material in the OT. Justin's argument is that the pagan myths suffer from interpolation, but the NT does not, presumably because of spatial and cultural distance from the common source. The distance is longer between the pagan interpolation and the OT source; whereas the NT itself does not suffer from that distance. That is a common tenet of source criticism, so it isn't without warrant to employ it.

Why does Justin have to exegete scripture in order to justify his parallels-cites?

For the parallels and pertinent Scriptures respectively, what are the authors' background, audiences, narrative meaning, etc.? These all determine if the specific parallel cited fits the NT text and vice versa. A generic motif does not a genealogical parallel make.

Because the points of similarity are specific enough to require borrowing from one to the other, and hence are not outweighed by the differences. You can't just say it's mere coincidence that pre-Christian Greeks thought Perseus was born of a virgin. Do you agree that virgin-birth was nothing unique to Christianity, yes or no?

a. All you have is a gut feeling, no data. Your first statement is a description masquerading as explanation, an assertion with no evidence. In what ways are they similar enough to require borrowing? Where is your interaction with the contents of the myth of Danae?

b. You have cited no evidence pre-Christian Greeks believed Perseus was born of a virgin coming from Justin. Justin is pointing to this as a birth by divine means, not a virgin birth. He makes two allusions: first, that Perseus was born of a mortal, Danae, he does not say she was a virgin. He says that "Even if" we affirm He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you accept of Perseus." Where is there a record of them believing that Perseus was born of a virgin? This statement indicates that the point of disanalogy, not the point of analogy, by use of "Even if," is the virginal aspect of it. It fails genalogical parallel at the crtical point of comparision in Justin, much less the rest of the content. In other words, Justin is saying "From your generic idea of divinely accomplished births of heroes in your own religions, accept ours as a similar story, proving we are not teaching unheard of ideas, even though we affirm, unlike your heroes, that our Hero was born of a virgin." How does this select for a copycat theory?

c. We here do contend that the virgin-birth is unique to Christianity. Perseus was not born of a virgin, he was born of a woman impregnated by Zeus through having sex with her. The NT narrative specifically denies that God the Father had sex wiith Mary. The Holy Spirit overshadowed her and Jesus was conceived. One major parallel here is to the creation of Eve from Adam. In the birth narrative of Jesus, this is reversed, as Eve was made from Adam, yet still considered in the image of God, so the Second Adam (Jesus), with respect to his humanity, was made from Mary, with his divinity coming through the hypostatic union to the Son. There is no sexual union. This is a virgin birth as well as a divine birth.

Please read my posts again, I cited the place where I felt Justin cited the closest parallels. Decrying this with "they are just general statements" doesn't perform the service of apologetics, but instead the service of preaching.

Steve, Jason, and I are the ones interacting with the pagan parallels. Where is your examination of them? I see none.

The fact that Justin admits that there is no virgin-birth known in the race of Abraham is irrelevant to the cites of virgin-births coming from the race of the Greeks.

a. Justin cites them as evidence of divine-human interaction not unparalleled in the religions of his listeners who are saying that the Christians are teaching ideas never before heard.

b. Justin says the virgin-birth is unique, but they are not unheard of.

c. Justin does not cite them as virgin births. He cites them as generic parallels of divinely achieved births.

Irrelevant, the chances of two different savior gods being said to be born of virgins, by sheer chance and without any borrowing from one to the other, given Christianity's existence in the middle of such paganism, are almost zero. The parallels need explaining, where did the idea of virgin-birth come from? Hint, the tale of Perseus is older than the first century, as pointed out by Justin's desperate resort to retro-active word of demons in popularizing Christ-concepts before Jesus was born, to make him seem less great to the populace.

a. What savior gods were born of virgins?b. What savior gods died by crucfifixion?c. Was Perseus born of a virgin?d. The antedating of the Perseus myth only shows its date, not that Christians borrowed from it. On the contrary, the NT narratives universe of discourse goes back to Isaiah and Moses, and what do we find in Justin's Apology, specific but a very lengthy and specific discourse to that effect.

What? Justin's sources for proving who Jesus was is irrelevant to the fact ofthe parallels themselves, I dont' care if Justin gets Jesus out of the OT or outof thin air, the Greeks believed Perseus was born of a virgin, this is then aparallel to debate with you, why then are you bringing up Justin's choice ofsources on Christ? Who cares?

So on the one hand, you need Justin to for you copycat theory but deny what Justin says when he contradicts you.

Second, the whole idea of gods impregnating woman was known before Christianity, and therefore, whether God the Father became flesh and took away Mary's virginity so as to concieve Jesus, or some other way which left her viginity intact, god's impregnating woman were a common motif. Your attempts to water down the parallels to "general statements" doesn't work.

You said it yourself, it is a common motif. A common motif is not a genealogical parallel. A common motif does not self-select for a copy cat thesis. You need a supporting argument for that.

fallacious argument from silence. Also, remember Celsus? Apparantly people DID make these connections.

a. On the contrary, unless you can show a genealogical parallel, Dave, it is you who argue from silence.

b. It is not an argument from silence, since Justin tells us that that is why he is making the argument. He is defending against the charge of atheism, by stating that it isn't as if these ideas had not, in an inferior and distorted form, appeared previously. It does seem to me that he would not have needed to point that out if his hearers already understood that. It's one thing to be aware of your own pagan myths, quite another to make the connection to what Christians believed to what you already believed, quite another to move from that to rethinking your charge of atheism made against them. That's the whole point of the First Apology--to make those connections for the audience, for they had not made them.

if it is true, as apologists say, that the pagan stories mimicking Jesus only came AFTER Christianity.

No, they say the evidence argues that the borrowing came after Christianity and in the other direction, not that all the stories came after Christianity. They also point out that the hard evidence of the content of the texts of these myths postdates the Christian era.

I cited Justin who referred to myths predating the first-century (as seen from his appeal to demon activity in OT days to mimic Jesus before Jesus was born).

I asked for evidence of borrowing. That requires a geneological parallel and interaction with the content of a particular myth or myths as well as the pertinent NT texts.

The parallels are still pre-Christian in origin, telling us who borrowed from who.

a. Once again, you need a geneological parallel. If a comes before b, it does not immediately follow that b borrowed from a, particularly when the source you cite for the dating of a specifically denies that b borrowed from a, which Justin does. A pre-Christian origin of a text does not self-select for Christians having borrowed from it.

b. Parallels? Name them. You've cited one. I am aware of the myths Justin cites, but not of the argument he makes that the Christians borrowed from them for their own narratives.

c. Justin's theory is that the Greeks borrowed from Moses and the prophets, and these new constructions suffered from cultural and spatial distance and were distorted by the Greeks. His theory is exactly opposite to yours, so you cite Justin dogmatically when it suits you but deny what he says elsewhere because it doesn't fit your thesis.

Because Justin's Christian case that Jesus was predicted in the prophets, I find no evidence for, while his citation of parallels to Christ, in the context of his defense to the Greeks, would only make sense if his audience first accepted the parallels, so that they COULD view Jesus as at least equal with their other gods. if Justin was lying to them, they'd know his information was false, and he'd have to be supremely retarded to make his case by lying to those who would know the difference. I don't take Justin to be that stupid, do you? he would only cite information on pagan gods that he knew were already accepted by his Greek pagan audience, right?

a. You have provided no evidence against Justin's case on these issues. You're speculating on what the audience believed prior to the 2nd century and assuming they were aware of the parallel between the Christian stories and their own. It does not flow that what they accepted about the pagan gods in their day translated into recognition that the Christians employed similar motifs, nor does it follow that the presence of analogical motifs at the time of Justin or even before selects for a copycat theory in which the NT narratives borrowed from those motifs, viz. the specific myth(s) Justin or anybody else mentioned simply from Justin's statements.

b. His citation is made to defend against the charge of atheism on the basis that his audience had NOT accepted the parallels. If they had done so, they would not have charged the Christians with atheism. That's the point of this particular work.

I never said Justin ever talked about who came first. Quit putting words in mymouth. I said he cited parallels period and then gave argument to show why hemeant that these greek stories with parallels to jesus existed before Jesus.

The very first thing I asked you to produce was a supporting argument from Justin that the Christians borrowed their stories from those myths. You pointed to Justin and you said that the parallels he cites are pre-Christian in origin and tell us who borrowed from who. Once again, we're on a sliding scale with your statements.

So? What then, was he just LYING when he mentioned parallels before?

This logic applies equally well to the rest of what Justin says that opposes your thesis.

After all the smoke, you now admit that the parallels to Jesus did indeed exist before the time of Jesus.

I never said the myths did or did not pre-exist Jesus. I said that Justin was not a authority on what people believed before that time, only what people believed at the time of his writing and that you need to find a geneological parallel that shows Christians borrowed from that myth if that is an argument you are going to make. Steve has outlined that process for you in his last response to you. I said that he offers his own theory of the origin of those parallels. If you can relegate his assertions about the OT origin of the NT narratives, based on your perception that there is no evidence, then, if pressed, I can say the same thing about the pre-existence of these myths. Based on the actual evidence, all we have here is an assertion that they existed, not what they necessarily believed about them, and where is the text containing those myths that predates Justin or the NT?

sure, that's Justin's view, but just because he uses the Christian concept ofChrist being predicted in the OT, doesn't mean Christ really was, and it isactually just as ridiculous as his retro-active demon activity retort.Also,Justin's speculation that the pre-Christian greeks borrowed ideas for theirpagan gods, is just that, pure speculation, and no history of greek mythologywill trace what they believe back to the OT writings.

Justin is merely trying to explain hard facts of parallels by resorting to dependence upon theuniquely Christian belief that Jesus was indeed pre-figured in the OT.

The shadow was NOT made plain. The idea that Jesus fulfilled the OT isnothing but unsupported assertion. They may as well insist Jesus wore a pink hatevery other Tuesday at 3 pm, as to insist that Jesus fulfilled the OT. Jesusdied on a cross. Whether that actually does institute a new covanent and makethe old one obsolete, is very far from being proved.

a. So now you agree that Justin is not arguing for borrowing between Christianity and paganism?

b. Where is your supporting argument for reading Justin in this manner and knowing his motives and that he was speculating on the origin. Why not simply divest his theory of the "mythological" aspect of demons and see a theory of literary dependency from the OT to the Greeks and another for the OT to the NT? That is in keeping with a naturalistic explanation too, isn't it? I'm only borrowing a page from your own rulebook. FYI, this is no more absurd than much of liberal source criticism, so it's not as if I'm not taking my cue without warrant.

c. If you really believe that, then I suggest you write a critique of the standard commentaries on Hebrews.

The original question was about the text of the NT, not Justin. I asked about Matthew in particular. If Christians borrowed from Greek pagan writers, why would Matthew do such a thing. Why would his audience find it persuasive?

The title is The First Apology of Justin.

"And if we even affirm that He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you accept of Perseus." (Justin Martyr, First Apology) --- did Justin write that or not?

a. What did they believe about Perseus? Judging from what we know about the myth, it was that he was the son of Zeus, born by having sex with Danae, and thus not a virgin birth, but a birth by divine means.

b. What is said about Jesus? That he was the Son of God, born by a virginal conception, born of a virgin, Mary, a divine birth and a virgin birth.

c. Justin is merely appealing to the generic motif, not the specific parallel.

Celsus also says the virgin-birth of Christian stories they stole from the earlier legend about Danae:

"What an absurdity! Clearly the christians have used the myths of Danae and the Melanippe, or of the Auge and the Antiope in fabricating the story of Jesus' virgin birth." -- Celsus On the True Doctrine, translated by R. Joseph Hoffman, Oxford University Press, 1987, page 57.

a. And in the same document translated by the same individual, you also find Celsus discussing a competing theory from the Jews, so what we have here is Celsus attempting to refute the story with more than one theory.

Let us imagine what a Jew—let alone a philosopher—might put to Jesus:“Is it not true, good sir, that you fabricated the story of your birth from avirgin to quiet rumours about the true and unsavory circumstances of yourorigins?…That she was pregnant by a Roman soldier named Panthera?…Is it not so that you hired yourself out as a workman in Egypt,learned magicalcrafts…

b. Antiope is impregnated by Zeus coming as a satyr, isn't she? If so, the birth is the product of bestiality, not a virgin birth.

c. Danae-Perseus is not born of a virgin.

d. Celsus is merely making an assertion without grounds for the assertion. If the bias of the NT writers influenced them to distort the truth about Mary and write the virgin birth, why accept that Celsus, writing against Christianity was not distorting the truth for similar reasons?

I said I could cite parallels, I never said i could do more than any biblical scholar and figure out which myths the Christians used and which they didn't.

They are analogical not geneological. Don't come here and throw up the copy cat thesis if you are unable to defend it from the standard literature.

He doesn't, I infered that by comparing "virgin-birth" with "virgin-birth", and reasoning that these two things are very close parallels. Let me know if you require further clarification.

a. Of course, you never actually compared "virgin-birth" with "virgin-birth" it was Steve, Jason, and I who did that for you.

b. When we did that, we found that the parallels fail at the critical point of comparison. At most, the parallel is generic, not specific.

c. In order to maintain a pagan copycat thesis, you need a specific, genealogical parallel between the NT narrative and a particular pagan myth. The one you offered fails that test. An analogical parallel does not qualify as anything more than that, especially when cited as an ad homineum argument by a secondary source using it for a specific purpose.

No, I gave reasons and argument for accepting as historical true, his cites of parallels,

Your argument cites Justin as inferring that the myth precedes the Christian narrative, therefore the Christian narrative borrowed from it. Merely accusing him of speculation without evidence begs the question of evidence. Fair enough. However, that doesn't stop you from leaping from his citation of the existence of a parallel to the assertion that the Christians borrowed their own stories from that parallel. That requires evidence as well, which you have not supplied.

Go read justin again, he cites many parallels to Jesus from pre-Christian pagan myths. I have no reason to think he is lying or stretching truth, given that the parallels he digs out of Greek myths would have been known to be accurate by his uniquely Greek audience the First Apology was addressed to. How stupid for him to establish common ground by drawing parallels to Christ from Greek myths, IF in fact no Greek myth had ever furnished such information.

a. Where is Justin's argument that any of these is geneological. They are merely motifs, generic statements. Nothing more.

b. Still you refuse to do the work and go and look at these parallels in detail yourself. You're the one making the assertion we should take them seriously and examine them. As we have already said, it is precisely because we have examined them that we reject the copycat thesis. Where is your supporting argument that any of these are valid parallels beyond establishing a generic motif?

Wrong, I'm asking you how you know Matthew and Luke's account of Mary's virgin-birth is true, and you simply trust the accounts without reason. Sorry, but if somebody says their wife is prenant by God, and not because of her infidelity, I'm gonna need a hell of lot more proof than a mere two letters from two of her friends who solemnly testify in favor of her version of events. How about you?

Fallacy of false dilema; there is a third option, namely, the burden of proof is on me to show that Matthew and Luke do not constitute "evidence". Do you believe it every time a woman claims her pregnancy is from god and not normal sexual relations? Why not? You trust Mary's two friends Matthew and Luke, so it appears you don't need more than the least bit of assertion on the point to convince you, right?

a. Showing that Matt. and Luke do not constitute evidence would require an argument the texts are spurious. The copycat thesis is one such argument employed for that very purpose. There is no false dilemma here.

b. Jason and Steve have offered reasons to affirm that the text is true at NTRmin.org's boards. This is a group blog and we are willing to post Jason's responses if he chooses to respond, so only one of us need address you. I need construct no separate argument of my own when I agree with them already.

Well, that too, but for now, the problem with Matthew and Luke is that YOU don't accept other similar stories immediately, so you have no business accepting Matthew and Luke.

I don't accept Matt. and Luke immediately. You are assuming things about me about which you are in no position to know, since, strictly speaking you and I have not interacted on that particular issue.

Justin was writing his first apology to the Greeks not the Jews, genius.

a. Matthew was written by a Jew, genius. Luke was read by Greeks and Jews, genius. If you wish to allege a pagan copy cat theory, a theory you earlier asserted is valid, then that is where you need to address it, to the source material in the gospels. Why would a Jew writing to Jews find parallels from Greek mythology persuasive, and why would his readers find them persuasive? The Jews had a low view of Greek mythology, and Pharisaic Jews in particular were prone to becoming Christians.

b. Justin was writing is First Apology to the Romans, genius:

Emperor Titus Ælius Adrianus Antoninus Pius Augustus Cæsar, and to his sonVerissimus the Philosopher, and to Lucius the Philosopher, the natural son ofCæsar, and the adopted son of Pius, a lover of learning, and to the sacredSenate, with the whole People of the Romans,

on the contrary, I don't find that your general statements about the Jews having a low view of Greek mythology, suffices to establish the case.

This was said with respect to the NT itself, not Justin.

Is the Father and Holy Spirit ever separate from each other EVER? No. You don't appear to have a very clear grasp of trinitarian theology.

I am not a modalist. I have quite a clear grasp of Trinitarian theology. The Father and the Holy Spirit are of one essence, not one Person. The Father did not die for the sins of His people. The Son did that. The Father did not overshadow Mary and cause the conception. The Holy Spirit did that.

you are assuming the parallels have to be closer than they are, when in fact not even all god-men in the Greek myths were exactly the same, so I have the perfect right to based a copy-cat thesis on something less than mirror-image perfect copying.

a. No, Steve and I have offered Metzer and Yamauchi. There is a vast literature on comparative mythology in the NT to which you have been pointed. Do you ever bother to read it?

b. Once again, an analogical parallel is not a geneological parallel, so I have made no assumption at all. You need spatial and temporal information and you need the texts themselves. There's quite a lot you have to do before playing Pagan Day on the Aeropagus with Greek mythology and the NT myths. Of all the folks on this blog who are interacting with those myths, you are the one who has provided a sum total of zero interaction with them.

False, I proved that this principle of uniformity has no apparant flaws that would require one to be a naturalist before they would accept it, and I proved that even Christians like you accept it implicitly in your day-to-day life.

a. No you made an argument from assertion through facile question-begging.

b. All you "proved" about our use of the prinicple of uniformity is that we use it as a general descriptive principle, but you did not show we use it prescriptively at all. You are using it prescriptively and in a stipulative fashion. We include all the information, you use it to exclude testimony. You conclude essentially that a resurrection from the dead cannot happen, because it is a miracle and miracles are non-repeatible and untestable, therefore, you exclude that testimony or you find an alternative explanation for that testimony. That is stipulation. It uses a general principle to rule out particulars. Testimony of general regularity does not invalidate testimony to the contrary in a particular instance. You're the one claiming you'd discount 6000 people swearing about what they saw on a stack of Bibles."

miracle claims are not "liberty", they are "contrary to life experience", at least mine.

a. Not my experience, for me life itself is a miracle.

b. "Contingency" means we expect the unexpected. We do not use our life experience as a stipulative judge. If I never see x happen, it does not rule out that x happened.

c. Miracle claims fall under the principle of liberty under the rubric of personal causation, viz. providence, a distinction you continue to ignore.

Dave next tries to blunt the force of the claim that his rules of evidence have changed by parsing each statement. However, the point of the list was to show that he had changed his position over time.

Plausible, not possible. I would expect you, to know the difference.

I do, and that is exactly what an argument from probability infers.

Where does that quote of mine say that miracles are ruled out of history because they are low in probability? I was talking about refraining from rejecting them by citing other instances of concretely established cases, of which miracle-claimers never have any.

Which is a probability argument, and in this very thread, you go on to say, "False, the uniformity of history is what makes miracles of low probability, they then THEN fully flushed into the sewer by naturalistic explanations which account for the data. See how that works?" If you think a naturalistic explanation accounts for the Resurrection of Christ, then by all means construct an argument on your blog and let Steve, Jason, and I take a look at it.

I didn't here say that miracles are automatically excluded because they are low in probability. I merely said show me one definite case so I can stop seeing them as impossible. WHY I SEE THEM AS IMPOSSIBLE, is because of the evidential force of naturalistic explanations.

But above you said you view them as implausible, so now you say you view them as implausible because you view them as impossible? Or is it vice versa? You need to stake out a position and stick to it. You said, "If 6,000 people swore on a stack of bibles that they saw someone walking on water, I would rest upon the confirmed physical laws to laugh in their faces.”

Yes, the fact that something is improbable DOES influence me to first deny it until I can interview the claimers to have a better idea of the place the miracle-claim originated.

What if there is tremendous historical distance between you and those claimers?

Do you think the thousands of sworn witnesses who testify that Mary appeared in Fatima Portugal, interpreted the phenomena correctly? No. Why then do you dump all over my hesitation to accept eyewitness testimony to the miraculous when you don't even do it yourself? a.

a. All you're doing is parrotting yourself when others have addressed this with you already. This is getting repetitive, Dave. To begin with you are in no postion to say that I what I do or do not believe about Fatima, since you and I have not interacted on the subject, and I have not interacted with anyone else on it, so don't chastise me or others for arguments from silence while freely offering them yourself about what I do or do not affirm.

Jason has already addressed this: You need to get specific. Tell me what it is about the Fatima reports that convinces you that 1.) they're false and 2.) they're comparable to the accounts of Jesus' resurrection. Remember, as Steve has told you repeatedly, we as Christians have no need to dismiss all claims of the supernatural, and we need you to be specific when you cite alleged parallels to Christian miracle claims. Vague comments like the one quoted above won't do.

b. You only mentioned Fatima to change the subject away from denying multiple attestation to the Resurrection. Jason was objecting to this: That's exactly right. If 6,000 people swore on a stack of bibles that they saw someone walking on water, I would rest upon the confirmed physical laws to laugh in their faces.”

c. Christianity does not hinge on the veracity of miracles outside the NT, so appealing to Fatima is just a red herring. How would the validity or invalidity of Fatima help your case?

If somebody told you they taught a pig how to grow wings and fly like abird, would you just believe everything you hear, or would your tendancytoward naturalist historiography rear it's ugly head?

Steve has already been over this with you, what 3, 4 times. One looses count. It won't help you to dredge it up with me. I have never argued we should believe in surd events. What would it take to show that pigs could grow wings and fly? A single documented case. I would not stipulate to the evidence before doing so. You, in contrast, have argued, "If 6,000 people swore on a stack of bibles that they saw someone walking on water, I would rest upon the confirmed physical laws to laugh in their faces.”

quit wasting my time with unsupported assertions. You only deny repeatability to the method of historiography because you know all your miracles in the bible will vaporize if you Do accept it. You will never quote any historian who doesn't subject history to repeatability tests, because they don't exist. Your single solitary reason for dumping all over repeatability and uniformity is because it would cause miracles to be most probably false, certainly not because you demonstrated that repeatability is somehow itself flawed as a tool of historical reconstruction

a. Au contrare, you have been pointed to a plethora of literature. There are any number of Christian historians and philosophers. It isn't up to me to do the work for you when no less than 3 of us have interacted with you on this already and all you keep doing is repeating the same assertions without advancing your argument. You're like a broken record, constantly hitting the same notes without advancing the album.

b. None of us ever said that historians don't use the priniciple of uniformity and repeatability nor have we denied its descriptive use, what we said is that there are historians who do not use it in a stipulative, prescriptive fashion, who place it under the principle of liberty and contingency.

In the January issue of the Berean Call newsletter, the question-and-answer portion attempts to respond to John Piper’s concept of “Christian Hedonism.” It is obvious that whoever wrote this answer (by the style, I assume that it is Dave Hunt) has read very little of Piper and is basing his entire response upon one quote taken out of context.

***QUOTE***

Question: Have you heard of John Piper’s philosophy of “Christian Hedonism”? It is becoming more and more popular (especially among Christian youth) and I believe it to be very dangerous teaching. Is Piper’s philosophy biblical?

Answer: Piper writes, “Those who know me best know that I am a Christian Hedonist… my desire to be happy is a proper motive for everything I do. I do what I do because I think it will make me happier in the long run.” This is the ultimate selfishness and it contradicts the Bible!

***END-QUOTE***

Piper is very often misunderstood and misrepresented on this subject. Perhaps it is his utilization of the word “Hedonism.” Well, whether or not we call the principle of enjoying God “hedonism,” it is Biblical nonetheless. Therefore, those who are desiring to honestly and scholarly respond to Piper should not base their response upon a misunderstanding of his using the word “hedonism.”

So what is Piper saying in this paragraph? Well, first of all, he is alluding to the universal fact about human nature: we do what we want. Think this isn’t true? Try doing something that you do not want to do. It is impossible. I could hold a gun up to your head and tell you to do something that you previously did not want to do, but then you would do it. That would not be an example of your doing something that you did not want to do because your motive to save your life trumps your dislike of the action, and you therefore want to do the action in order to save your life. So it is a given fact that we do what pleases us. Piper’s philosophy is that if we find enjoyment in God, obedience to His commandments will follow. We know that Piper’s philosophy is Biblical for a few reasons:

1. God condemns obedience that does not have a heart of joy. Piper states, “It goes back to Moses, who wrote the first books of the Bible and threatened terrible things if we would not be happy: ‘Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and a glad heart…therefore you shall serve your enemies’ (Deuteronomy 28:47-48).” Similarly, David states, “Serve the Lord with gladness” (Psalm 43:4) and “Delight yourself in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4.

2. The Bible constantly compares the false pleasures of the world with the pleasures of Christ, stating that the second far exceeds the first. Why do you think the Biblical authors do this? Are they merely stating a fact? I believe that they are appealing to the desires of the readers, so that they call believers to find satisfaction in God. “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

3. God offers a joyous award for obedience and service. Jesus stated, “Blessed are you when people insult you… Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great” (Matthew 5:11-12).

We find this mentality in Church history as well. Jonathan Edwards stated, “The happiness of the creature consists in rejoicing in God, by which also God is magnified and exalted.” Augustine said, “How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose! …You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure.” Blaise Paschal wrote, “All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end…. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.” So we find that this philosophy of Piper, though stated in new terms, is not at all foreign to the Bible or to Church history. Keeping in mind this and the principle that man only does what he wants to do, we can now look at the statements of the Berean Call:

***QUOTE***

Christ said: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest commandment” (Mt. 22:37-38). If I love God because it will make me happy, that is not love at all. I must love God for who He is and because of His infinite love for me (”We love him, because he first loved us” - 1 Jn 4:19) in paying the penalty for my sins in the purchase of my redemption.

***END-QUOTE***

Why do you love God? From a Reformed perspective, God works that love in His elect, that God efficaciously changes the desires of man so that man then wants to love God. But we all know that the Berean Call is far from Reformed. So why do you love God? The universal principle is that you do what you want to do, and this can not be denied. Unless you first appreciate the cross, unless you first appreciate the fact that God loved us first, unless God first works in us to cause us to find pleasure in all of these things, you will not love God. You will not love God unless you want to love Him. This is very simple. Unless God first becomes our joy, we will not love Him.

***QUOTE***

Christ said we cannot be His disciples unless we deny ourselves, take up the Cross, and follow Him (Mt. 16:24-25). How can I deny myself to make myself happy? That is like Buddha, whose greatest desire was to escape desire. For Piper to say that our highest goal is to make ourselves happy undermines loving God and denying self.

***END-QUOTE***

This is simply ridiculous! I would hate to be this author; to not find enjoyment in denying yourself must be miserable! On what assumption does the Berean Call state that denying ourselves will not make us happy? To deny the self does not mean to deny pleasure. Rather, it means to deny the current desires of the flesh in order to embrace the desires of the Spirit. So to deny the self is to gain new desires; desires to glorify God by serving Him and enjoying Him.

***QUOTE***

Piper justifies his theory not from the Bible but from the Westminster catechism: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” But the Bible never talks about “enjoying God,” much less that this is why man was created. Solomon says that to “fear God and keep his commandments…is the whole duty of man” (Ecc 12:13). Not a word about “enjoying God” being the “chief end of man.”

***END-QUOTE***

Ignoring for the moment that this author makes the ridiculous statement that “the Bible never talks about enjoying God” (we have already proven this wrong), let’s deal with the false distinction between obeying God and enjoying God. Piper writes on this subject:

They say things like, “Don’t pursue joy; pursue obedience.” But Christian Hedonism responds, “That’s like saying, ‘Don’t eat apples; eat fruit.’ ” Because joy is an act of obedience. We are commanded to rejoice in God. If obedience is doing what God commands, then joy is not merely the spin-off of obedience, it is obedience. This Bible tells us over and over again to pursue joy: “Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous ones; and shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart” (Psalm 32:11). “Let the nations be glad and sing for joy” (Psalm 67:4). “Delight yourself in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4). “Rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven” (Luke 10:20). “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4).

The Bible does not teach that we should treat delight as a mere by-product of duty. C. S. Lewis got it right when he wrote to a friend, “It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can.” Yes, that is risky and controversial. But it is strictly true. Maximum happiness, both qualitatively and quantitatively, is preciously what we are duty-bound to pursue. The Dangerous Duty of Delight, p. 13-14.

***QUOTE***

To replace loving God with pursuing one’s own joy as the the first and greatest commandment makes man more important than God and will ruin those who adopt this philosophy. It takes little knowledge of Scripture, and little common sense, to realize that anyone who makes his own joy his highest move will make the wrong choices in life!

Piper’s “Christian hedonism” won’t fit in Job’s “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15). The Psalmist’s “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God…” (Ps 42:1-2) becomse rank selfishness if the legitimate reason for seeking God is personal happiness. “Christian hedonism” will not help those struggling with fleshly lusts that seem so much more desirable at the moment than any “joy” that might result from resisting temptation.

***END-QUOTE***

I’m curious about the reason why this particular author pursues God. Why do you pursue Him? Did you just initiate yourself to pursue Him? For the person with an accurate, Biblical perspective, the pursuit of God is initiated first by God and His working in the sinful heart of man. We pursue God because He has caused us to long for Him. Augustine stated, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” We simply will not pursue God unless we first want to pursue Him.

In any case, the Berean Call very mistakenly blurs the line between sinful lusts and the pleasures of God. Based upon what has been previously noted, this is the same as blurring the line between obedience and disobedience.

“Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live.”

I posted the Dawkins’ piece without any commentary on my part because I thought it would be more fun, for a change, to let other commenters chew it to pieces. And, indeed, you’ll all done a swell job.

But before the piranhas have totally devoured his bloated remains, I want to have a final bite at the corpse.

One of the stock objections to Christianity is that a Christian must commit “intellectual suicide.” Not only is that a stock objection, but a stock phrase—parroted ad nauseum.

And a number of you have pointed out that, in fact, Dawkins, the doctrinaire atheist, is the one putting a bullet in his brain.

But it’s important to observe that there is a screwy logic to his position. Given his starting-point, his conclusion is inexorable.

If naturalistic evolution is true, then men are simply meat machines. There is no rational, incorporeal soul which is the seat of human personality.

Naturalistic evolution is a strictly physical process which operates on strictly physical organic and inorganic materials. That’s the whole point. We’re a sack of chemicals.

If so, then mental properties must be reducible to material properties.

If so, then consciousness is just an illusion.

It is easy to belittle dualism. Gilbert Ryle famously caricatured dualism as a “ghost in the machine,” while Daniel Dennett, his modern mouthpiece, caricatures dualism as a homunculus piloting the cockpit of the brain—as though there were a miniature person inside the skull looking out the windshield of the eyes. It reminds me of a scene from “Men In Black,” about a little alien using a synthetic body as a spaceship. And Antony Flew’s parable of the invisible gardener is in the very same vein.

Very cute. Very clever. Even if you can’t remember the argument, or never read the argument, the witty illustrations stick with you.

There’s only one problem with all of this. Once you deny the mind, you have nothing left with which to think or argue.

Dawkins speaks of the “useful fiction of intentional agents.” There is no real person behind the eyes—thinking, feeling, and intending. That’s a grand illusion or evolutionary construct. Our selfish genes have tricked us into believing that we are intentional agents.

But Dawkins’ problem is that he must assume dualism in order to mock it. Notice how he objectifies the situation, as if he could stand outside his neural programming and cast a backward glance with serene critical detachment.

Somehow he’s able to put enough distance between his fictitious self and his brain to detect his fictitious self. Somehow he’s privy to the magical tricks of the Blind Watchmaker.

Of course, you’re left to wonder what self there is to detect a fictitious self. Looks like the recessive image of a mirror within a mirror, within a mirror, ad infinitum.

So, in order to make his case for atheism, Dawkins must tacitly assume a God’s-eye view of “a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live.”

And the value of this exercise is that the reasoning is reversible. If this is, indeed, an inevitable consequence of his evolutionary starting-point, and if that conduces the Darwinian into an argumentum ad absurdum, then if, contrariwise, our consciousness is, in fact, real, evolution must be false.

If you bash your brains out every time you step on the garden rake of evolution, then it’s time to turn the rake over, facing down.

Dave continues to play the same broken record, so only a few comments are necessary:

***QUOTE***

Common ground that includes specific parallels such as sons of gods being born in unique fashion, virgin births, resurrections and ascensions. Justin just isn't sufficiently stupid to create parallels where his Greek audience would know none exist. THIS is why you have to deal with the parallels he cites seriously, instead of just waving them off never thinking about how ridiculous Justin and his audience would be if in fact the parallels weren't as close as the ones he cited.

Because the points of similarity are specific enough to require borrowing from one to the other, and hence are not outweighed by the differences. You can't just say it's mere coincidence that pre-Christian Greeks thought Perseus was born of a virgin. Do you agree that virgin-birth was nothing unique to Christianity, yes or no?

Irrelevant, the chances of two different savior gods being said to be born of virgins, by sheer chance and without any borrowing from one to the other, given Christianity's existence in the middle of such paganism, are almost zero. The parallels need explaining, where did the idea of virgin-birth come from? Hint, the tale of Perseus is older than the first century, as pointed out by Justin's desperate resort to retro-active word of demons in popularizing Christ-concepts before Jesus was born, to make him seem less great to the populace.

Second, the whole idea of gods impregnating woman was known before Christianity, and therefore, whether God the Father became flesh and took away Mary's virginity so as to concieve Jesus, or some other way which left her viginity intact, god's impregnating woman were a common motif. Your attempts to water down the parallels to "general statements" doesn't work.

All that need be established is that Jesus fits the motif and that at least SOME of the parallels to jesus, existed BEFORE Jesus did, which is what Justin does for us when he cites retro-active demon activity before Christ to explain why Christ, coming later, looks so much like them. He would hardly refer to the activity of demons BEFORE THE BIRTH OF JESUS, in creating those parallels, if it is true, as apologists say, that the pagan stories mimicking Jesus only came AFTER Christianity.

I cited Justin who referred to myths predating the first-century (as seen from his appeal to demon activity in OT days to mimic Jesus before Jesus was born).

Source it however you wish, but as i argued earlier, it's too stupid to suggest that Jesus was said, by sheer conicidence, to be born of a virgin, when that story originates in a place where the virgin-born men and other similar god-men are commonplace stories.

Celsus also says the virgin-birth of Christian stories they stole from the earlier legend about Danae.

The fact that the chances are too low that they came up with a virgin-born god-man with no borrowing from such motifs that were common in first century Palestine and Greece. If I come up with a truck that is a stick shift, what evidence do you have that I borrowed the concept? See how stupid that is?

***END-QUOTE***

1.Justin and Celsus are not authorities on what Greeks believed before the time of Christ. They are only authorities on what Greeks of their acquaintance believed in the 2C AD.

They are in no position to know when or where a given Greek myth arose.

What Dave needs to supply are primary source materials from the period in question which witness to the Greek belief before the time of Christ.

2.That is just one preliminary step. Another preliminary step is to establish a spatial coordinate alongside the temporal coordinate. He has to show that Matthew and Luke were in a position to be in contact with this tradition.

3.That is just one more preliminary step. A further preliminary step is to show that Matthew and Luke were actually influenced by this tradition.

For example, both Philo and Josephus are in contact with Greek ideas. But that does not cause them to import Greek mythology into their theology.

4.Dave hangs his whole case on a secondary source which, in turn, refers to a single Greek myth.

And the myth of Danae, the mother of Perseus, is not a virgin birth. The fact that Zeus assumes the form of a gold shower to gain access to her chamber does not mean that he impregnates her in that same form. He assumed that form because the chamber was otherwise inaccessible. But having chosen that modality to gain access to Danae, we would expect Zeus to reassume the normal form in which he deflowers young maidens.

At the very least, the account is completely ambiguous at precisely the point where we need it to be quite specific to establish a parallel.

5.In the meantime, Dave continues to disregard the OT precedents.

6.Dave also makes a vague reference to “resurrections” and ascensions.” No specifics are given.

Likewise, he refers in passing to “savior gods.” Again, no specifics are given.

I’d refer the reader back to the online materials by Metzger and Yamauchi which I’ve already cited.

7.The concept of divine sonship is already present in the OT. It is first employed as an adoptive metaphor for God’s election of Israel. From there it becomes a metaphor for God’s selection and coronation of David. Then the Davidic expectation receives further elaboration.

8.Dave tries to weasel out of the ad hominem nature of Justin’s appeal by pretending to wax indignant at the very suggestion.

Yet that doesn’t prevent Dave from referring to Justin’s “retroactive” explanation as a “desperate” expedient.

But if Justin was prepared to resort to desperate expedients to make his case, then what is so unreasonable about Gene and Jason and myself pointing out that Justin’s appeal to comparative mythology is an ad hominem argument?

9.We do have one demonstrably pre-Christian witness to a virgin birth. And that is the LXX rendering of Isa 7:14. This represents a pre-Christian Jewish understanding of that particular prophecy.

10.There are also, as Gene and I have pointed out, other Jewish heroes whose conception was attended by supernatural circumstances.

11.Yes, there are many examples in pagan literature of gods impregnating women. And none of these amounts to a virginal conception. So you have a “parallel” without a parallel to the specific feature of the virgin birth.

12.Dave also has a habit of padding his case by repeatedly speaking in the plural. But the only concrete example he gives is the myth of Danae. Dave is a one-trick pony with a busted limb.

***QUOTE***

Why does Justin have to exegete scripture in order to justify his parallels-cites?

***END-QUOTE***

Because, before you resort to generic parallels, you need to study the documents under comparison and see, in terms of literary allusions and the cultural background of the authors, what their sources, if any, would be.

***QUOTE***

Wrong, I'm asking you how you know Matthew and Luke's account of Mary's virgin-birth is true, and you simply trust the accounts without reason. Sorry, but if somebody says their wife is prenant by God, and not because of her infidelity, I'm gonna need a hell of lot more proof than a mere two letters from two of her friends who solemnly testify in favor of her version of events. How about you?

Fallacy of false dilema; there is a third option, namely, the burden of proof is on me to show that Matthew and Luke do not constitute "evidence". Do you believe it every time a woman claims her pregnancy is from god and not normal sexual relations? Why not? You trust Mary's two friends Matthew and Luke, so it appears you don't need more than the least bit of assertion on the point to convince you, right?

***END-QUOTE***

i) The accounts of the virgin birth represent the fulfillment of type and prophecy.

ii) But even apart from (i), faith in Scripture isn’t based on having specific and independent corroboration of everything Scripture says, anymore than faith in my best friend is based on having specific and independent corroboration of everything he says.

Just as my faith in my best friend is based on my knowledge of his general character, our faith in Scripture is, among other things, based on our knowledge of its general character.

***QUOTE***

False, I proved that this principle of uniformity has no apparant flaws that would require one to be a naturalist before they would accept it, and I proved that even Christians like you accept it implicitly in your day-to-day life.

***END-QUOTE***

No, he did nothing of the sort. All he’s done is to assert the principle of uniformity, which he shores up with circular arguments and disguised descriptions, as well as willfully disregarding the difference between uniformity and providence.

***QUOTE***

quit wasting my time with unsupported assertions. You only deny repeatability to the method of historiography because you know all your miracles in the bible will vaporize if you Do accept it. You will never quote any historian who doesn't subject history to repeatability tests, because they don't exist. Your single solitary reason for dumping all over repeatability and uniformity is because it would cause miracles to be most probably false, certainly not because you demonstrated that repeatability is somehow itself flawed as a tool of historical reconstruction.

***END-QUOTE***

i) If Dave thinks that we’re wasting his time, he’s more than welcome to go elsewhere. He was the one who chose to pick a fight over at one Christian blog, and then continue his fight over here.

ii) Dave is in no position to assign motives to Gene or Jason or me. Many Christians, myself included, are adult converts to the faith.

iii) This is the second time he’s appealed to historians, as well as scientists (see below). This appeal was stupid before, and is just as stupid on the second round since, as I’ve already pointed out, many distinguished scientists and historians (as well as philosophers) are Christian.

***QUOTE***

Strawman, I don't say miracles are unusal, I say the contradict scientific laws, because the laws wouldn't be "laws" if there possibility of suspending their effect on reality. When we see something that LOOKS like it suspends physical laws, do we automatically say "must be true miracle"? Or "probably something deceptive/false is going on here"?

If somebody told you they taught a pig how to grow wings and fly like a bird, would you just believe everything you hear, or would your tendancy toward naturalist historiography rear it's ugly head?

***END-QUOTE***

i) Like an ox hitched up to a rice mill, Dave can never see himself free of his circular rut. All he ever does is to plod around the same well-trodden groove.

ii) To take a mundane example, left to their own accord we expect rocks to roll downhill rather than uphill. But sometimes rocks roll uphill. That can happen in an earthquake or volcanic eruption, or when a team of men rolls a rock uphill.

All other things being equal, we expect dead men to stay dead. But Jesus was not an ordinary man. The Resurrection is not a freak event.

At the risk of stating the obvious, this is the framework within which the Resurrection occurs: Jesus is God Incarnate. Jesus becomes incarnate to redeem sinners from the power and penalty of sin. He comes in fulfillment of OT type and prophecy. Death is not a natural event, but a penal sanction. The atonement involves the vicarious death and resurrection of the Redeemer.

Within this framework we would not expect ordinary providence to obtain. To constantly compare it to flying pigs is hopelessly obtuse.

Ask people why they support the death penalty or prolonged incarceration for serious crimes, and the reasons they give will usually involve retribution. There may be passing mention of deterrence or rehabilitation, but the surrounding rhetoric gives the game away. People want to kill a criminal as payback for the horrible things he did. Or they want to give "satisfaction' to the victims of the crime or their relatives. An especially warped and disgusting application of the flawed concept of retribution is Christian crucifixion as "atonement' for "sin'.

Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour. As scientists, we believe that human brains, though they may not work in the same way as man-made computers, are as surely governed by the laws of physics. When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it, usually by replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or software.

Basil Fawlty, British television's hotelier from hell created by the immortal John Cleese, was at the end of his tether when his car broke down and wouldn't start. He gave it fair warning, counted to three, gave it one more chance, and then acted. "Right! I warned you. You've had this coming to you!" He got out of the car, seized a tree branch and set about thrashing the car within an inch of its life. Of course we laugh at his irrationality. Instead of beating the car, we would investigate the problem. Is the carburettor flooded? Are the sparking plugs or distributor points damp? Has it simply run out of gas? Why do we not react in the same way to a defective man: a murderer, say, or a rapist? Why don't we laugh at a judge who punishes a criminal, just as heartily as we laugh at Basil Fawlty? Or at King Xerxes who, in 480 BC, sentenced the rough sea to 300 lashes for wrecking his bridge of ships? Isn't the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a defective component? Or a defective upbringing? Defective education? Defective genes?

Concepts like blame and responsibility are bandied about freely where human wrongdoers are concerned. When a child robs an old lady, should we blame the child himself or his parents? Or his school? Negligent social workers? In a court of law, feeble-mindedness is an accepted defence, as is insanity. Diminished responsibility is argued by the defence lawyer, who may also try to absolve his client of blame by pointing to his unhappy childhood, abuse by his father, or even unpropitious genes (not, so far as I am aware, unpropitious planetary conjunctions, though it wouldn’t surprise me).

But doesn’t a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment. Don’t judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty car?

Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing? Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment.